AI is transforming every part of business—from customer experiences to internal operations—and the networks that power it have never mattered more. In this episode, Joel Mulkey, Founder and Board Member at Bigleaf Networks, explains why resilient connectivity is now a strategic necessity for AI-driven organizations.

Joel shares the story of how a failed attempt to help a local church build internet redundancy sparked the idea for Bigleaf. His mission: make enterprise-grade reliability simple, accessible, and automatic. From that vision came a cloud-based tunnel architecture that reroutes around outages in real time while keeping sessions stable. It’s a system designed to work seamlessly, even when no one’s watching.

He walks through how Bigleaf’s adaptive monitoring continually measures circuit health ten times a second to deliver the best possible user experience—without IT teams needing to touch a thing. That means calls stay clear, video meetings don’t stutter, and mission-critical applications keep running smoothly even when individual connections falter.

Key Learnings:

• Tunnel-based architecture preserves sessions while rerouting instantly.
• Adaptive monitoring turns wireless connections into enterprise-grade options.
• Prioritization keeps interactive traffic stable under heavy load.
• AI workloads raise the stakes for uptime and session persistence.
• Seamless failover eliminates the human scramble during outages.

Mulkey also challenges one of the most persistent myths in networking—that wireless is inherently unreliable. He explains how intelligent monitoring and adaptive steering have redefined what’s possible: “With 5G and low-earth-orbit satellite systems, you can combine multiple wireless networks to achieve throughput and resiliency once limited to fiber.” This shift allows businesses in rural areas or multi-location operations to enjoy the same reliability once reserved for major urban centers.

As AI adoption accelerates, the cost of downtime grows. Joel breaks down how data-driven systems and machine learning models rely on stable sessions, whether running in the cloud or on local clusters. When an IP address changes mid-process, critical workloads can fail—causing hours or even days of lost productivity. Bigleaf’s tunnel-based design prevents that by maintaining consistent connectivity no matter what happens upstream.

He also shares why network resilience is as much about people as technology. From his earliest entrepreneurial lessons to leading a company that now serves thousands of organizations, Joel’s people-first philosophy has remained constant. “I’m most thankful that what we were able to hold on to is how we treated our team, where we recognized their value and treated them like people.”

This episode isn’t just for network engineers—it’s for every leader who understands that connectivity and productivity are inseparable. Whether you’re running AI workloads, managing distributed teams, or supporting customer-facing operations, resilience is now a business-critical advantage.

Hear the founder’s perspective on how adaptive networking is redefining uptime, wireless performance, and the future of AI connectivity. Watch the full episode, explore the recap, and subscribe for more conversations with leaders shaping how technology supports business outcomes.

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Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Bigleaf Networks
• Cisco
• Comcast
• Starlink
• Verizon